What Can the US National Team Realistically Hope to Achieve at the Copa America?

LOS ANGELES — How good is good enough? How deep do the USA have to go? Is the style in which they play important too? These are the key questions facing the United States and Jurgen Klinsmann ahead of the Copa America Centenario.

Chile showed in 2015 the boost a host nation can get at a tournament. Their fans filled the streets and the stadiums and virtually the whole country roared their team on to victory.

The LA Times say “nothing less than advancing to the semifinals” will do for Klinsmann, and that seems to be the consensus among fans, too, with the penultimate stage of the tournament being a recognised achievement landmark.

That means the USA will be looking to repeat La Roja’s trick this summer. Except there are a few key differences.

Where Jorge Sampaoli had at his disposal world class stars like Arturo Vidal, Alexis Sanchez and Claudio Bravo leading the way, Klinsmann has to turn to veteran stars like Clint Dempsey and Jermaine Jones to provide examples for the rest.

Where the Argentinian’s setup was internally understood and a natural progression from what Marcelo Bielsa started, Klinsmann seems to have tinkered, dabbled and switched, but without ever settling on a clear starting side or even formation—although 4-3-3 does look increasingly likely to be used at this tournament.

While Chile arrived at the 2015 Copa America coming off the back of an impressive World Cup campaign where they beat Spain in the group but were knocked out by hosts Brazil on penalties, the USA have suffered some bad results, including their disappointing fourth-place finish at the Gold Cup.

They are second in their World Cup qualifying group for Russia 2018, behind minnows Trinidad and Tobago.

And while the majority of people in Chile had huge interest in the tournament, with entire cities obsessing over it, in the States, it’s very much an event that will have a small but dedicated audience.

Football as a sport is still growing in the American consciousness, and this tournament will raise its profile further still, but ticket sales that have not seen any match sell out show that it’s not captivating large numbers of people.

Their striker, Jose Altidore, suffered a hamstring injury and has been ruled out for the tournament, the same problem that affected him at the Gold Cup and the World Cup in 2014 before that.

But amid the confusion and unsettled nature of the team, there are some bright shoots. Namely Christian Pulisic and Darlington Nagbe. The Borussia Dortmund and Portland Timbers men could turn an often dry U.S. team into an exciting attacking force.

The pair combined in the pre-tournament friendly against Bolivia, with Nagbe feeding Pulisic, who scored to become the youngest scorer in the country’s history at 17 years and 253 days old.

Pulisic joined Borussia Dortmund in January 2015 and made his debut for the German side a year later. On top of his U.S. record, he’s also the youngest foreign …

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